Though thunderstorms maybe small, they are still very dangerous. The most dangerous aspect of a thunderstorm is the flash flood. Each year nearly 140 people lose their lives. Most deaths occurring at night or when people become entrapped in their automobiles.




Another offspring of the thunderstorm are straight-line winds. The most common type of straight-line wind is the downburst. These thunderstorm cells can produce wind gusts in excess of 100mph!




Hail is probably the most unusual occurrence in a thunderstorm. Hail causes nearly 1 billion dollars in damage to property and crops. How does hail form? Updrafts in a thunderstorm take water nuclei up into the higher reaches of the atmosphere. There is freezes and falls. Another updraft will take the hail stone up and another layer of ice will form on it and so on.... This process continues until the stone becomes so heavy that the wind can no longer push it up, it then falls to the ground causing destruction to whatever it may hit.




Lightning. We are in awe of its beauty yet petrified by its power. And rightly so, since every year nearly 100 people are killed by lightning and many more are injured. Not only does lightning take its toll on life, but on property. Millions of dollars in damage is caused by lightning strikes in the United States alone.

What exactly is lightning? Well, for the Greeks it was a weapon used by Zeus. For the Vikings, lightning was produced by Thor, as his hammer struck an anvil while riding his chariot across the cloud tops. Today, Science tells us that lightning is caused by the electrical charge difference between the base of the thundercloud and the ground. The thundercloud is negatively charged while the ground is positively charged. Because of the large potential difference between the two charges, energy is released in a form we know as Lightning. A lightning stroke begins as an invisible stroke called a stepped leader which moves downward from the cloud in many different directions. As the negatively charged leader from the cloud approaches the ground, a positive leader from the ground goes up to meat the negatively charged leader. Since opposite charges attract, these two leaders make contact with each other. When the positive leader moving upward makes contact with the negative leader lightning is produced. There will be subsequent strokes until both the ground and cloud have become neutraly charged. Lightning, however does not always reach the ground. Lightning can occur from cloud-to-cloud. It is not yet understood why lightning sometime reaches the ground and does not. There are different classifications of lightning: Ball lightning, heat lightning, bead lightning, sheet lightning, silent lightning, black lightning, ribbon lighting, colored lightning, tubular lightning, meandering lightning, cloud-to-air lightning and stratospheric lightning. And believe it or not, lightning even gives off its own radio frequency; spherics. Spherics can be heard on the AM radio as static.